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When asked why he dined so frequently at the restaurant in Paris’s Eiffel Tower, novelist Guy de Maupassant answered that it was the only place in Paris where he could not see the structure. He wasn’t alone in his dislike for the tower which faced much critisicm when it was built in 1889. If it hadn’t proven so useful for radio communications it would have been torn down in 1909. Many Parisians still hate it.

The Eiffel Tower is however, the most visited paid monument in the world and it is one of the most recognized structures on earth. In 2009, Paris topped the Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index and the Eiffel tower is, visually at least, a big part of that brand.

When it comes to branding cities nothing is as effective, albeit expensive, as a memorable skyline. Maybe Boris Jonson should bare that in mind in the upcoming rebranding of London (mentioned in an earlier post). Forget the Gherkin and Big Ben: London needs a huge, pointless, iron tower, preferably visible from space, to snatch the top seat in Anholt-GfK Roper’s Brand Index away from it’s ancient rival, Paris.

One of the most controversial recent brand launches was undoubtedly when the London 2012 brand was introduced to the world. Within a week from its launch the logo sparked a nationwide debate, hostile questions in the house of commons and apparently, an epileptic fit (do I smell urban myth?).

The brand identity was designed by a London consultancy called Wolff Ollins (their site is one of the more original I’ve seen for a while – very nice) and got praise from some corners and scorn from others (via geekfriendly). It even generated parody logos, as seen on the right.

Regardless of how one feels about the logo itself, the frenzy that surrounded the launch was slightly misguided in one sense: The hoopla around the price tag, which was £400,000. Or as Seth Godin put it, “spending $800,000 for a logo is ridiculous”.

Now, don’t get me wrong. £400,000 is a lot of money. But it wasn’t just a price tag for a logo. Wolff Ollins is a brand consultancy, not a convenience store. In Don’t F*** Mess with the Logo, Jon Edge and Andy Milligan have an interesting take on what a brand actually is:

E x E x E = B

Essence (what you stand for) x Expression (how you communicate it) x Experience (what you actually make or provide) = Brand (what people think of you)

Magic x colour, fun, no cynicysm x family entertainment = Disney

The brand, and identity, is made up of every single facet of the 2012 games: Pens, videos, clothes, imagery, copy text, signs on taxi cabs and buses, stamps – everything has to be thought through and it all has convey a unified message for a very expensive, high profile undertaking.

It may have been extremely expensive … but it’s not just the logo. You’ll see. Hopefully.

Last week I published a blog post about the I❤NY brand. Now, London’s mayor Boris Johnson has decided: Get me one of those.

That’s right, the city of London has published an invitation to tender for “creative development and design of a brand for London“.

Moving Brands, a London based brand agency, have been running a blog, A Brand for London, about the process of “crowdsourcing” their own submission. They eventually made their submission available online.

Unfortunately, they didn’t make it into the next round. It would have been interesting to follow the process of developing the brand further, and crowdsourcing it, and Moving Brands certainly had some top-rate people working on the job, including Scott Thomas, Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, we’ll be following the London brand story closely, as part of our team is based there and we love the city. We’re not optimistic that the other agencies will provide us with blogs about how they take their design further, but we can always hope.

In 1977, during the deepest recession New York had seen in decades, the state launched what would turn out be one of the most successful “Place Branding” campaigns in history.

The campaign comissioned Milton Glaser, a graphic designer, to design a logo and he came up with the now iconic I❤NY image above. More than thirty years later the logo is still being used and is recognized around the world.

In 2008 a new I❤NY campaign was launched, run by legendary ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The relaunch includes different themes for the logo (see below, click for a larger version), one version for every season and so on.

The brand guidelines for the relaunch are available online and make for a very interesting read. Have a look and see examples on how not to use the brand, read about the brand’s history and learn the lyrics to the theme tune. It’s all there.

When it comes to the roll-out of such a campaign, a product like Brand Capital would help give access to all of the brand’s digital assets to whoever needs them. The brand guidelines can also be built into a user’s account in Brand Capital so that downloading a shopping-themed logo or a jingle for an answering machine becomes an easy, understandable, three-click process.

Making a successful brand starts within the organization. The values of your company, internally and externally, should be in sync. That is why getting your employees to represent your brand, is extremely important.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Kaupthing and the Icelandic banking crisis. Kaupthing actually used internal branding to encourage their employees, to emphasize on their superiority and how successful they were. Here you can see video that was made for the eyes of Kaupthing employees.

What do Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa and Neo (you know, The One in The Matrix) have in common with Kaupthing? I don’t know but looking at this comparison while listening to U2, I got to admit, I AM PSYCHED!

This video has similarities to the propaganda movies the Nazis used to promote their ideology. According to Goebbels:

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it”

If you replace the word propaganda with internal branding, and Goebbels with David Ogilvy this would be a great quote, a little excessive, but still great.

Last year, while doing research and competitive analysis for online versions of brand guidelines, I came across the NHS Brand Guidelines site and I must say it is still one of my favorites.

It’s intuitive, easy to use and tackles the issue of representing guidelines for all the different sub-brands by reusing a lot of the content. For instance to logo guidelines are the same across all the different types of organisations while signage differs between National Organisations and treatment centres.

Reading through the copy, you get this strong message that it’s written by people who have been around the branding block a couple of times. There are clear, to the point guidelines. Dos and don’ts like the following:

Do:

• make sure you use the NHS logo consistently and correctly;
• only use original digital graphic files.

Don’t:

• alter the NHS logo in any way;
• embed the NHS logo in a line of text;
• use the NHS logo more than once on single sheet, unless on a graphic display.

… and the second link under tools and resources is this baby. The most popular destination of any brand site.

The only thing I would add to that site is a good file repository and download basket.

Our aim with Brand Capital is to supply you with the application, tools and guidelines to build something as intuitive as the NHS guidelines for your company.

Sign up now and get notified when we launch.

In a previous blog post, Agnar discussed celebrity brand ambassadors. Another kind of brand ambassador however is the grassroots volunteer: The passionate user who constantly sings praises for a brand they love.

When Steve Jobs founded Next Computers, before rejoining Apple, he had the branding legend Paul Rand (who designed the IBM logo among others) design the Next brand and provide the company with its brand guidelines. The brand identity cost $100,000 and was delivered complete with a 100-page guideline brochure. There is little doubt that the brand guidelines for today’s Apple are even meatier.

One application of the Apple brand we doubt is covered in the brand guidelines however, is shaving the logo on the back of a brand ambassador’s head. Or applying the brand as a tattoo.

You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? Although tattoos and hairdos will probably not be set as default Brand Capital “toolboxes” as we’re calling them, Brand Capital is easy to customize. With Brand Capital, you can make sure that brand ambassadors, celebrity or otherwise, are complying with the brand guidelines when they decide their loyalty is undying and they invest in a tattoo – with your logo.

Even before I did work for Nokia I was amazed by the free marketing done by all those Nokia owners turning on their phones the moment a plane landed. You know the tune, it’s ringing in your head now.

The Nokia tune is played more often than the Coca Cola tune and the Birthday song combined (or there abouts). Just take every Nokia phone out there, assume that at least 20% don’t change the default ring tone and multiply that with the number of calls. Whola, the most played sonic branding in the world…

This got me thinking that Apple might have missed a trick by not incorporating the famous boot up sound that they have on the computers into the iPhone as well. Would that classify as a big branding blunder?

Sonic branding takes many shapes and forms and a good friend of mine studying this topic informed my that for instance Audi takes great care to design every sound in the car. Including the closing of doors, clicks of buttons and swipes of wind screens. It all helps building that feeling of quality and enhances the brand experience.

Have you ever wondered how many takes are required and how much it costs to get that Tssschhh sound just right for a Coke advert? I also wonder if the old classic Christmas song is still played outside Iceland :p

Managing a sonic brand for your average company might just include audio files created as background music for video presentations, background music for telephone service or jingles for radio advertising.

Brand Capital will support all major audio formats and help you organize and redistribute those files where needed.

In John De Bello’s classic movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” from 1978 a voice on the radio is advertising beer: “Schmidt – Because you’re never too drunk to ask for more!”

In a sense this joke captures the essence of why companies care about brands.

When you have a strong brand, your customers can

• Discover you
• Recommend you to others
• Ask for more

In fact, as we mentioned in an earlier post, the first ever registered trademark in Britain was for a beer brand: The Bass Ale Red Triangle. Registering the Red Triangle provided the brand with legal protection. Bass knew that if customers would see the Bass Red Triangle on any pub sign or bottle of beer, that triangle was in effect the company’s promise of a certain experience for the customer.

These days it’s not just signs on pubs and labels on beer bottles. And it’s not just the logo. To apply a brand today a company needs a way to consistently apply any part of their identity wherever their audience is. This could be a logo on a coffee mug, a template for a PowerPoint presentation or animations for digital banners. Or even a radio commercial in a remake of a classic B-movie.

After the collapse of the Icelandic financial system it was vital to restructure the country’s banks quickly to maintain basic banking services. New banks emerged from the old ones, and over the next couple of months they should be able to function like business as usual. But will they be able to grow? If the publicly owned banks ever plan on getting new investors and rebuild their reputation, it is essential that they build a brand from scratch. Let’s take Kaupthing as an example; the bank was alleged to have lent millions to its owners. It was one of the fastest growing banks in the world and over night the bank – and the brand – was ruined.

Kaupthing Bank is now known as The New Kaupthing bank. I’m not sure that the connection with the old brand is a good idea, because you immediately associate it with something bad. But there is an opportunity in every problem. This might be the time for ad or branding agencies to show what they are made of. If they are able to help make a brand that regains the trust of customers and lenders, they might even save the Icelandic banking system.

They say your brand is your company’s most valuable asset. If that is true, Kaupthing, or the other Icelandic banks for that matter, aren’t worth a lot. But with a solid branding strategy there might be hope for them yet.

I believe our app, Brand Capital, will be beneficial to banks, local and global. It might not save the Kaupthing brand, but that is not our intention. With Brand Capital our ultimate goal is to increase brand consistency and reliability by making your brand available to those who have anything to do with brand implementation and thereby make sure that when a new, redesigned brand rises from the ashes, it is used to its full potential in every aspect of a business.